Soil and plant fertilizers are essential to healthy plants and gardens. Ensuring plants receive the proper amount of nutrients at the proper time remains an important task of all plant caretakers. Technology in this field is ever-growing and there exists a plethora of synthetic fertilizers in the market today. However, recent trends have brought many consumers back to more natural ways of fertilizing or feeding their plants with organic fertilizers or plant foods. Common types of organic fertilizers or plant foods include manure, compost, bone meal, blood meal, worm castings, and fish extracts.
Besides the appeal of organic fertilizers or plant foods sounding “good for the earth” or “natural,” the appeal of organic fertilizers or plant foods over synthetic ones is not in the types of nutrients the fertilizer/plant food provides. The benefits of organic fertilizer/plant food come from both the timing the nutrients are available to plants and the resultant soil structure from natural processes occurring.
Soil contains many microorganisms that are constantly working to break down organic matter. Whether you use synthetic or organic fertilizer, these microorganisms are already present in the soil. As these microorganisms break down the organic matter in soil, they release nutrients that the plants are now able to absorb through their roots. It is this constant process that provides the plants with a steady stream of nutrients in a form plants can use. Synthetic fertilizers are limited to the nutrients contained within the substance and have no way of producing a constant stream of nutrients for the plants without reapplication.
Furthermore, the natural process of microorganisms breaking down organic material provides for ideal soil structure for root systems. The constant process involves microorganisms eating the organic material, defecating, and dying. This creates a viscous material that clings to the soil granules to form larger clusters. These clusters create an air-space in the soil layer for water to enter or for roots to develop and expand. Synthetic fertilizers do not provide organic matter to the soil for these microorganisms to consume and, thus, do not enhance the soil structure around the root system of plants.
Synthetic fertilizers also have the potential to provide too much or too little nutrients to the plant system. Plants typically require 13 different nutrients. The three primary nutrients that plants need the most of are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK). Most synthetic fertilizers only focus on NPK levels and disregard the other 10 nutrients plants need. The other 10 nutrients plants need are calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, chloride, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. Organic fertilizer or plant food is constantly replenishing and providing the nutrients plants need, not just NPK. For example, proteins contain a good source of iron. However, the plant cannot absorb an iron molecule trapped inside a protein. The microorganisms can break down the protein to release the iron in a state usable by the plant. Synthetic fertilizers contain no such process and plants are limited to only those additional nutrients already contained in the soil. Moreover, synthetic fertilizers are subject to leaching from rain water or other underground water-level activity.
Although plants need as many as 13 essential nutrients, obtaining too much of these nutrients can be toxic. The danger with synthetic fertilizers lies in the high concentration of nutrients contained therein. If not properly applied to the soil, the plant may intake too many nutrients and start to deteriorate if not die completely. The natural process provided by organic fertilizer/plant food reduces this risk significantly.
One major drawback of using organic fertilizers or plant foods is the offensive smell they persistently give off. This may not come as a surprise given the common ingredients in organic fertilizer: dead fish, dead animal, worm castings, manure, etc. Throughout the entire process of microorganisms eating, defecating, and dying, chemical compounds are constantly released. The compounds humans can smell are typically the compounds containing sulfur. Humans can smell some sulfur compound concentrations as low as 0.0005 to 0.3 parts per million. The genetic purpose behind this is to prevent humans from eating things we should not be. Humans' natural response is to stay away from bad smelling objects because humans genetically know that eating something decomposing and giving off a sulfur smell can harm them greatly.
When it comes to organic fertilizers, there is little risk of a human desiring to consume it. Thus, this smell becomes more of a nuisance and less of an illness-saving genetic mechanism. This smell may prevent a typical person from using organic fertilizer or plant food in the home to feed houseplants or in a garden near the outside of the home. People are left with no choice but to use synthetic fertilizers at the compromise of their preference for organic to avoid the uncomfortable smell of organic fertilizers/plant foods.
Of the known methods of fighting offensive smells, absorption, adsorption, combustion, and masking, only masking has an effect that can persist for an extended period of time as the microorganisms continue to process organic material.
Absorption, perhaps through a water bath or rinse, would be inefficient, as this could only be done once and any subsequent odors would have no protection. Absorption also likely would leach out important nutrients that the plants need.
Adsorption, perhaps with the use of activated carbon, would be ineffective for the simple reason that there is no way to effectively funnel the smelly gases so that they must contact the carbon.
Lastly, combustion is ineffective due to the impracticability of requiring a person to light a candle or start a campfire outside for the mere purpose of burning off smelly gases.
There exists a need for an invention that combines an odor masking ingredient that will persist in the soil with the organic fertilizer. The present invention is designed to overcome this problem.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention will include an ingredient with a desirable smell to mask the foul odors of organic fertilizer/plant food. This ingredient may be vanilla, anise, apple, caramel, orange, lime, lemon, mandarin, grape fruit, citrus, lavender, peppermint, raspberry, clove, cinnamon, banana, butter, carrot, cherry, eucalyptus, coconut, chocolate, garlic, grape, maple, strawberry, persimmon or any other desirable smelling ingredient. This ingredient may be thoroughly integrated into the organic fertilizer or plant food mixture so that the ingredient is consistent throughout the fertilizer.
As microorganisms break-down the outer surface of the organic fertilizer, new layers of the desirable smelling ingredient will be revealed. This will continually release the desirable odor throughout the effective life of the organic fertilizer. These desirable odors will mask the foul odors so the user does not experience the constant unpleasant smell of organic fertilizer, but instead experiences a subtle note of a desirable smell. It is important to not add too much of the desirable smelling ingredient as many desirable-smelling ingredients have an unpleasant smell in high concentrations.